“Is that book in existence still?” asked Kilgariff, with manifest eagerness.
“I reckon so, but maybe not. I really don’t know. Anyhow, I shall never see it again, of course, and nobody else would care for it.”
“Oh, yes, somebody else would. I would give a thousand dollars in gold for it at this moment.”
“Why, what for? It was only a childish thing, and besides I had never studied about such things.”
“Listen!” interrupted Kilgariff. “Do you know where science comes from, and what it is? Do you realise that absolutely every fact we know, of the kind we call scientific, was originally found out just by somebody’s looking and listening as you did with your animals and birds and flowers? And the persons who looked and listened and thought about what they saw, told other people about them in books, and so all our science was born? Those other people have put things together and given learned names to them, and classified the facts for convenience, but the ones who did the observing have always been the discoverers, the most profitable workers in science. Audubon was reckoned an idle, worthless fellow by the commonplace people about him, because he ‘wasted his time’ roaming about in the woods, making friends of the wild creatures and studying their habits. But scientific men, who are not commonplace or narrow-minded, were glad to listen when this idle fellow told them what he had learned in the woods. In Europe and America the great learned societies never tired of heaping honours upon him and the books he wrote; and the pictures he painted of his woodland friends sold for fabulous sums, bringing him fame and fortune.”
“I am glad of that,” answered the girl, simply; “for I like Audubon. I’ve been reading his Birds of America, since I came to Wyanoke. But I am not Audubon, and my poor, childish writings are not great like his.”
“They are if they record, as they must, observations that nobody else had made before. On the chance of that, I would give a thousand dollars in gold, as I said before, for that childish manuscript. Could you not reproduce it?”
“Oh, no; never. Of course, I remember all the things I put into it, but I set them down so childishly—”
“You set them down truthfully, of course.”